Balalayka
by Jane Bell
Summary: As Shane looks back, he has no idea how he came to deserve such happiness. Shane Gray character study; some Shmitchie and Shane/Music


_Disclaimer: CR, characters, songs etc belong to Disney._

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**Balalayka**

As Shane looks back, he has no idea how he came to deserve such happiness.

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Grandpa and Grandma Cesario had been aspiring beatniks, aspiring as in Beatles lovers, adept to the funny clothing and natural ways, but averse to drugs in general. He was English and she Australian. They met in a party which had claimed to be a second Woodstock and turned out to be quite lame, except they fell in love. Not a year later, both barely legal, he busking in the subway and she babysitting for the neighbours, they got married and lived, mostly and until today, happily ever after.

Their first baby came after a wild night's celebration of his job in a music school and her coming into a small fortune after the neighbour's grandfather passed away. The squeamish little boy very nearly killed Grandma Cesario, the doctor told her she would not have more kids, and neither member of the couple knew why, but Brown was simply the perfect name for their little bundle of joy. At least he had smiled when first called by that name, or so Grandpa would tell.

Brown was playing guitar before he could talk, or so he himself would tell and, for ten sweet years, they were perfectly happy in their musical, comfy life. It happened then that, in spite of the doctor and many-a-time-disregarded contraceptives, another baby came, a girl this time, and from the very first breath she was impossible. Violet cried hours straight, at night specially, suffered every possible baby disease 'til the age of three, every school problem 'til the age of ten. By then, Brown had been off to Music College, happy as hell to be rid of his problematic little sister and nice-however-weird parents. For the next eight years, during college and Aerosmith tours, every time he heard of Violet it was to listen to her babble about boys she'd broken the heart of.

He was backing up the Mickster and had met half of the guys who, in a little more than a year, would be the White Crows, when Grandma Cesario called him home to Violet's first wedding. To whom? Ah, that Mike Gray, remember him? They used to have swimming classes together. Why? Youth, reckless as ever. Violet said it was love.

Six months later, Brown became _Uncle_ Brown, and another two months produced Violet's first divorce. She had never liked Mike, she told her brother, what did it matter, as long as he sent little Shaney's money?

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Grandma managed to raise her newest toy of a grandson for some time, and Shane was such a good, pretty baby! Gutti-gutti-gah, so cute! But Grandma's natural ways and refusal to take the meds the doctors told her to (since Violet, she didn't believe in doctors) led to conditions no 48-year-old should have, and consequent fear of unintentionally harming the baby. Quite fortunately (or not), Violet's new boyfriend was sweet enough to hire a full-time babysitter – and give Violet a ring not much later.

Shane doesn't remember Ralph much – glimpses of cold kindness only, some, he suspects, of his own invention – but from what he heard of Grandpa, he was just like Mike before him and Theodore and Angelo after him: a good-looking guy, with a good deal of money, who in a few years bored-good his mother. However, the memory that marked Shane's first years more strongly was that of meeting Uncle Brown, and it most certainly featured Ralph.

Uncle Brown had been in Europe with the White Crows by the time of Shane's fifth birthday, and it struck him then he only knew his nephew through photographs and dreadfully short visits. He had to get the little brat a good present, or else what kind of uncle would he be? Talking to Grandma, he confirmed his suspicions that the boy was being tossed from one au-pair to the other. Yep, the chap needed to be shown some love and, upon entering an instrument shop on the Russian border, Brown knew exactly what shape that love would take.

Shane remembers vividly the sight of that wild-looking man with a lot of hair and beard, in loose jeans and faded leather jacket, but mostly he remembers Uncle Brown's friendly smile and the huge bright-coloured box he held. Unwrapped, the present turned out to be a triangle with a prolonged end and strings attached, the wood carved intricately and painted in warm colours. Shane remembers frowning in confusion.

"What is it?"

"A Russian guitar, Shane."

Ralph had laughed and said something about old movies, a Jivago and a Julie Christie (of whom Shane had never heard), then wrapped and arm around Violet and said "Leave the boy alone, B. He'll never play, anyways, look at him! It's just plain he's going nowhere."

Ralph had thought him too much a child to understand, but Shane understood all too well, especially Violet's laugh afterwards. The very next morning he ran away from school and went to Grandpa asking for a guitar lesson. He was sent back to school, obviously, and grounded until he was ten, but Uncle Brown gave him a regular guitar for Christmas and Grandpa sent him a book for self-study.

When Violet divorced Ralph, Shane asked for a keyboard as a compensation gift, then got an electric guitar and a set of drums from Theodore, wanna-be-daddy number three. By the time he was free from the grounding, Shane could play all of them reasonably well and hid from everyone but his shower the fact he could sing. The Russian guitar, however, remained a musical mystery to him.

The White Crows were disbanding, meanwhile, and Brown bought a piece of Canadian forest with his share of the band's money. In the summer of 2001, he took Shane with him to Canada; they hired an architect and a whole lot of people and bought a whole lot of material, so that, by the end of that summer, all of Brown's money was gone, Shane wrote his first song and Camp Rock was, say, half finished (once more willing investors/founding members were found, it was finished in the following six months).

At Violet's fourth wedding – to some amazing Italian guy, rotten rich, a sports car collector etc – Shane asked Uncle Brown if he could move in with him, be home-schooled an all that. New wanna-be-daddy number four, however, pronounced himself a family guy (Violet's unwillingness to have another child would drive the family guy away), and wouldn't allow his new _bambino_ to escape him before they had had a chance to bond. It was the first time Brown remembers seeing Shane scoff.

Shane can only wonder what would have become of him if he had moved in with Uncle Brown, and his imagination tended to vary picturing him either as the greatest musician since Elvis, or as a pod-smoking Camp Rock musical director. Although maybe neither would have happened, he considers now, because he remembers what he had been looking for in asking to live round the clock in Camp Rock was never love, a fatherly figure, a bonding with nature or such; it was the call of music, solely, that he was answering, and already could he identify in himself that self-centered attitude. Angelo might have been a nice guy, for all he knew, Shane never gave him a chance (except when offered either new instruments or new music instructors; perhaps Angelo was a nice guy).

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His first love, apart from music, of course, was Ms. Lancaster, nineteen when he was eleven, his first singing instructor, and one hell of a bitch when it came to it. She left him at being offered a better job, and then he met Macey, Stella, Tawni, Mary, Sam… Brown took him to Camp Rock at the age of twelve, even if the minimal age allowed was fourteen, because Violet suspected Grandma's gutti-gutti-gah baby had an STD.

An only-child of many step-fathers, anti-social and with a dangerously high opinion of himself, the first ten minutes of Camp very nearly suffocated Shane. He ran to his cabin as soon as he was allowed, the one closest to the lake and occupied by two boys only (the Camp had no fame then, and that summer it had been barely half-full). That was where he met Jason.

"Hi, buddy! I'm Jason, and you?"

"Shane."

"Cool name! Hey, is that a guitar? I'm here for that too! How old-"

"Wanna hear me play?"

"Sure!"

Jason was the first person since Brown to be interested in his music, the first, too, to praise him, and the first he remembers himself praising. It was friendship at first sight and guitar duels 'til morning light every other evening. Jason was fifteen at the time, the most amazing guitar player Shane has yet to see, cool-tempered to the point of childishness. He understood that there was little Shane enjoyed talking about except music, knew how to entertain him with funny stories about his triplet baby sisters, kept quiet at the right times and was probably the only person who didn't pick on him because of his age or because he was the Camp owner's nephew. That year, Shane and Jason won Final Jam with a song with little lyrics and guitar solos that raised the hairs of Guitar Heroes experts.

Afterwards there were Alex, Lizzie, Miranda, Hanna, Carter, monthly goes to Jason's so that they'd practice, the longest time he has ever spent with Mike Gray (which was also the closest he ever got to living on his own, and which taught him how to order pizza and hire a cleaning lady – Maria, oh yes), since Violet was in Tahiti burning Angelo's divorce money. Then, there was summer again.

That's how he counted his time: how many girls and uneventful little changes in his life, how many months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, **seconds** until summer. For that was when he felt alive; he _lived_ in Camp Rock only, where he could be who he wanted to be, where he could be better than the shallow, rude, selfish, heartless _**jerk**_ he was nine out of twelve months of the year. Looking back, he doesn't blame Violet, Mike and every other person in the world who hated him during those years – he very well did everything to deserve said hatred.

Things changed on his fourth year of Camp, when in with the newcomers came a skinny fellow who was a seventy-year-old in the body of a boy not even fourteen, and the brat became competition in singing class. Nathaniel his name was, and inexplicably Jason took a liking to him. Go figure. Nate became their unofficial drummer, but quit the band because Shane wouldn't stop scowling at him. The kid went solo on Pyjama Jam with a song about a Hindi deity who had so many arms he could do anything, but, also because of his talent, he pushed people away. The stupidity and sheer creativity of the metaphor, as well as the catchy rhythm, got to Shane, and he actually went down on his knees to beg Nate he came back. It was the first group hug Jason ever gave them.

That year, the three of them wrote their first song together, about friendship and love and loneliness and disappointment and happiness and life, all contrived through the sound of twin guitars and confused but beautiful lyrics in unpaired voices. The band remained unnamed, and Brown threatened to present them at Final Jam as "The grown-up kid, the narcissist and the kid grown-up". That night they went on stage as laughed-at JNS, rocked the Camp and not only won Final Jam with honours, but also got a record deal.

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Violet was ecstatic at her Shaney's _sudden_ success – observation that harassed him even more than "I always knew you had talent, sweetie, always did!" She became the band's first manager and almost immediately set out to turn their so-called "revolutionary music" into a pricey product. The label had their name changed to Connect Three – in spite of Jason's lack of excitement, Nate's eye roll and Shane's scowl. After they were done composing new songs, Violet got them a bunch of DJs to "help out with the harmony", and the music was soon barely theirs. It sold, however, and it sold sinfully well. Soon the three of them were swimming in money, had girls and parties to choose from, needed security guards, and Shane's new obsession became hair product instead of trying to figure out the Russian guitar into the night.

He loved all of it at first, loved the praising, the screaming girls, the money and the lifestyle that came with it. He was sixteen when he ceased writing songs completely and seventeen when he had a row with Violet over their earnings (and the fact he suspected she was flirting with poor, clueless Jason; disgusting). He fired her once she played the "I'm your mother!" card. He'd turn eighteen soon enough, he told her, he no longer needed her, neither her lack of care for him, nor the money she never invested on him. Shane remembers vividly her angry tears as she left (and only now does he realise why she took the Russian guitar with her), Nate's headshake and Jason's sad eyes. Shane admits to having felt no guilt. A bad boy, him? No, the worst.

It all went downhill for him afterwards. The new manager brought little changes, their lives continued to consist of sleep all morning, rehearsals and TV all afternoon, bad music and girls every and all night. Like his mother with her many affairs, it bored Shane to no ends. Nothing was exciting anymore, nothing was fulfilling or meaningful. He couldn't even remember why he had gotten on this boat, and it became annoying that he couldn't get out. His friends would tell him he was acting different, but he'd just shrug and tell them to bugger off, he was fine.

When "bugger off" became "fuck off!" and he threw a tantrum on the set of their new music video, Nate and Jason decided they had had enough of bad-boy Shane. They wanted their conceited little music genius, camp-rocker Shane back, and so to Camp Rock they sent him.

Shane had experienced hatred towards Violet (for, say, everything), his grandparents (for disregarding him along with his self-proclaimed mother), his father and step-fathers (Ralph for a reason, but the others for merely existing), Brown (for not having fought for his guard, for not being interested in his career, for Shane knew-not-what), but he had never truly hated his band mates, his first real friends. He did then. Camp? Were they _nuts_? No parties, no drugs, no girls (legal ones, at least); if that wasn't payback, he didn't know what was. They were taking away his pain meds! He _**so**_ hated Jason and Nate.

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And he'd call Jason childish, Shane now reflects. Had there ever been a more spoilt child than himself at the age of eighteen? It would be easy to say he had been screwed up and therefore became a bad boy, but truth was he had screwed himself up, became bad by his own choices, and it took a flour-faced, non-legal, lying, angel-voiced girl to make him realise that.

Michelle Torres. Mitchie to most, Mitch to him. The voice inside his head, the reason he sang. He can't put in words the amazing feelings she gives him better than that. She reminded him of the music he liked, hell, of what music _**is**_; she called him a jerk so in earnest it shook his bases, she inspired him to write songs again – and he hadn't been so spontaneous with a guitar in ages so as to lose sleep over a song he never finished, but which he never realised had always been meant to be part of another's. Shane had never been so truly in love with another human being, he sees now, before he heard mysterious Mitch's voice and realised a single person could contain all the music in his world. Through and through, she was his missing piece.

Mitch had her own issues of self-confidence at the time – hers had taken the form of lies, his of stolen moments by the lake. They were the same in ways he is too ashamed and too proud to recognise, and it gave him no right to explode on her like he did, not after she had turned him back to camp-rocker Shane. Not after she had helped him express his most messed-up feelings in song so clearly – to put it dramatically, his harmonic scream for everything he had lost and for who he wanted to be; no more fancy cars (and God bless metaphors no one got), he wanted to follow his dream: he wanted to _play his music_.

It took him the break-up of their almost-relationship to realise he needed her if he wanted to go on playing, and somewhere deep down he had always known the mermaid's melody was hers. As his Mitch sang her heart out in Final Jam, he shook inside in fear she wouldn't accept his, but knowing somehow she would. They sang together – her song? his, too? he flattered himself so – she forgave him, he kissed her and, still that summer and many late night canoe rides later, they broke the law.

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Life got _good_ from there on. Connect Three sales, high before, went through the Empire States' roof. Mitch got a record deal, thanks to his good influence and her own awesomeness, and started a band with her friends Caitlyn, Lola, Peggy, Ella and even Tess (the Garage Campers – yes, there could be a tackier name than Connect Three). Shmitchie was Tween Weekly's front page before Jason could say "birdhouse!"

[He had faint, perhaps invented, memories of a blond bitch who would follow him around during his last year of Camp, who then settled for Nate – who at the time had been snogging a curly-haired obnoxious girl, also frightfully familiar. Shane chose not to dwell on the too-clear memory of these two girls, friendly before, if he wasn't mistaken, punching each other because of Nate. Opposition's conspiracies, not worth digging into.]

He met Violet again the night he won his first Grammy (out of the very hands of TJ Tyler herself; Tess had gone purple). His mother approached him arm-in-arm with Uncle Brown, wearing a timid smile, apologetic in her posture and discreet in her dress. Shane barely recognised her.

"Congratulations, mate!" was the tight hug Uncle Brown gave him, and something else was said, but Shane didn't really hear. There was something he felt he need to do, and for once it wasn't just standing there being congratulated.

"Hi, Mum," he said to Violet, who stared back, impressed and made speechless by the affectionate vocative and his truly content smile, almost half as apologetic as hers. He hugged her, perhaps for the first time in his life, and also perhaps for the first time didn't scoff at being called "Shaney". He whispered he was sorry, and she didn't even ask for what, instead answered "Me too" with her mascara entirely ruined.

"Remember that guitar I gave you, like, a century ago?" Uncle Brown asked, his savvy smile on. Yes, he knew perfectly well which. "Guess who learned how to play it?"

Violet went red on the cheeks, and Shane didn't think twice before asking her if she could play for him later, and he had a mind to learn if she would teach him. She agreed with black stripes on both sides of her face, and then asked if he was going to introduce her to her soon-to-be daughter-in-law or not.

He didn't like saying he had forgiven his mother for never giving a damn about him, in spite of the fact he had, because he knew he had never been the most likable kid on the block. She told him she had gotten a degree in Finance (Uncle Brown later added there had been some dating of a professor, how typical) and was going to work on the Camp with her brother, the needed accountant he had never hired. Mitch actually liked her, commented she seemed lonely and dared to suggest she might be Mr. Camp-Rock's-trumpet-instructor perfect match. In spite of himself, Shane shrugged and even laughed.

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It would be being delusional to say that such a selfish bastard such as himself deserved an inch of his luck. After everything he did to himself and to all of those who are dear to him, he still has it all: a trillion and one Grammys (and a trillion and two for the Garage Campers), the best friends and band mates ever, his mother finally and actually acting like a mother, the most supportive mentor in his uncle, the heart of the sweetest and most beautiful woman in the world in his keeping.

As he watches his Mitch asleep on their bed, he cannot help a content smile as he runs careful fingers through her hair. It is Sunday morning and the sun has just risen, the light reflecting on their awards and instruments illuminating the room warmly.

Mitch furrows her brow in a yawn before opening her eyes and smiling brighter than all the stars in the universe. "Good morning, my pop star."

"Good morning, beautiful."

"Might I ask why the silly smile so early in the day?"

"I don't know. I guess it just hit me how blessed I've been."

Mitch bites her lower lip with a cute grin and snuggles closer to him. Her kiss is chaste and a blessing in itself as she takes his hand and places it lightly on her lower belly, her smile brightening even more at his widening, understanding eyes.

"You have _no_ idea!"

As Shane looks back, he _indeed_ has no idea how he came to deserve such happiness.


End file.
